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Welcome to the Composition:Today New Music Concert Listings.
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BBC Hoddinott Hall celebrates its fifth birthday with timeless masterpieces by Handel, Mozart, Parry and the warmth, vitality and fiery rhythms of Dvořák's Eighth Symphony. Experience music by namesake Alun Hoddinott, including Dragonfire, a tour-de-force for BBC National Orchestra of Wales' percussion section.

Grammy award-winning Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, one of the most famous choirs in the world, collaborates with Gilad Atzmon, a writer and an award-winning jazz saxophonist and member of The Blockheads living in London.

Beethoven’s powerful Seventh Symphony is prefaced by a trio of beguiling modern French works in the first of two concerts pairing Beethoven with recent French music. The BBC Singers have had great success with Boulez’s now-classic work cummings ist der Dichter, which sets the poetry of ee cummings for vocal ensemble and chamber orchestra. Conductor Ilan Volkov, known for his high-voltage performances and radical programmes, presents the UK premiere of Hugues Dufourt’s piano concerto with Nicolas Hodges as soloist. Dufourt’s own world of sonorities reflects that of one of France’s greatest 20th century composers, Gérard Grisey. In his monumental early work Mégalithes, 15 brass players scattered around the hall hurl sonic clusters of shimmering dissonance into the auditorium – a not-to-be-missed experience.

The JACK Quartet’s concerts prove time and again that we belong to a golden age of chamber music composition, one in which creative diversity and difference are encouraged and celebrated.
This programme, devised by Wigmore Hall’s Composer in Residence Julian Anderson, opens with a seminal work composed in 1931 by Ohio-born Ruth Crawford Seeger, the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and closes with Horaţiu Rădulescu’s evocatively titled Fifth String Quartet of 1995.
Brian Ferneyhough’s wild Exordium, written in honour of Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday in 2008, stands in bold contrast to Julian Anderson’s ‘Light Music’ and the world première of a new score by Christopher Trapani, winner of the 2007 Gaudeamus Prize.

To Scots, living on so many islands and dependent on it for so much, the sea is a constant presence to be loved and admired, but also feared and respected. This complicated relationship with the sea is reflected here in pieces by two of the most important and widely performed living composers.

MacMillan’s Tuireadh laments the dead of the Piper Alpha disaster in great tidal movements of sound and grief. South African composer Volan’s Symphony offers a beautiful and oblique reflection “on the sea and the role of ships and their cargoes in our history”.

Contemporary composer Max Richter premieres his 2002 debut album Memoryhouse with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by André de Ridder.

An homage to Europe and the haunting power of memories, Memoryhouse is the stunning album that announced Max Richter as a major talent. With echoes of his earlier collaborations with Roni Size and electronic duo FSOL, influences of post-rock acts such as Sigur Rós and classical forebears like Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass, this work shows the unique mix of contemporary classical and electronics that would become the signature language in Richter’s musical universe.

Come and experience music by two leading Danish composers. The different levels of mood and emotion created by Poul Ruders have established him as one of the world’s leading composers. Kafkapriccio includes score from his opera, based on Kafka’s The Trial. In contrast, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s compelling, ritualistic command of sound creates music that nags at the imagination long after the performance has ended.

"We're also very much aware that it’s you who brought democracy to Chile" said Lady Thatcher when she invited the senator Augusto Pinochet to tea in London in 1999, sparing not the slightest compliment for the man who would soon have to stand trial for his crimes. Following the example of Nixon in China by John Adams, the opera Aliados inspired by political history, in this case by the Falklands War in 1982 and the improbable alliance of the Iron Lady, champion of liberalism, with the Chilian general during the Cold War.

The failing memories of the two aged leaders retired from roles of power, revealing archives, and collective history are at the heart of this project by Sebastian Rivas and Esteban Buch, two Argentineans looking back at a decisive event for their generation and their identity. On the theater stage, designed by Antoine Gindt to look like the set of a television program, reality strikes through visual manipulation and stylized singing. An opera in real-time in every sense of the word; historical time and computer time.

The bleak, enclosed world of a fishing village provides the backdrop for the story of fisherman Peter Grimes and his uneasy relationship with the other inhabitants. Following the death of Grimes's apprentice, the community presumes Grimes to be guilty. Although he is cleared of any blame, the villagers no longer trust him, and when his new apprentice accidentally falls to his death, Grimes spirals towards a tragic breakdown.

The most significant British opera in over two centuries, Peter Grimes is a work of visceral and sustained beauty, and is notable for the orchestral interludes that depict the sea in different moods.

This is the first revival of David Alden's 2009 five-star sell-out production. ENO Music Director Edward Gardner again conducts the electrifying score, with Stuart Skelton heading an outstanding cast in his return to the title role.

Co-produced by ENO, De Vlaamse Opera, Opera de Oviedo and Deutsche Oper Berlin.

15-year-old Ziyu Shen won the 11th Lionel Tertis International Viola Festival and Competition 2013, held on the Isle of Man, setting a new record of the youngest winner. She also gave the world première of the Six Sorano Variants by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the commissioned work for the competition.

Change of programme
At the request of the soloist, the concerto being performed will now be the Britten Violin Concerto, rather than the Elgar Violin Concerto that was originally scheduled when listings were first published in January 2012.

We’re back for more of our residency at East London’s Shacklewell Arms on 6th February, getting into the Valentine spirit and celebrating the launch of Juice Vocal Ensemble’s single “Heal You” with music by Anna Meredith and lyrics by Philip Ridley. “Heal You” is one of a collection of ten love songs as part of juice’s upcoming album, Laid Bare, which will be released in April.

Juice (‘The 21st century’s answer to the Swingles or the King’s Singers’ The Times) are at the forefront of the UK’s experimental/classical scene, performing new vocal music which draws on classical, world music, jazz, folk, pop, improvisation and theatre. They have featured on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, and were the first UK prize winners in the history of the internationally-renowned Tampere Vocal Festival.

Juice‘s debut album ‘Songspin’ (Nonclassical, 2011) won an international Independent Music Award for Best Contemporary Classical Album in 2012. Featuring remixes by the likes of Camille producer MaJiker and Bjork collaborator Mikhail Karikis, it was reviewed by The Observer as “Eighteen immaculately achieved tracks, spanning Elisabeth Lutyens to Gabriel Prokofiev via folk song and avant garde, enchant and enthrall”.

For the single release launch party, there will also be support and Nonclassical resident DJs spinning the best in contemporary classical, avant-garde electronica and new music.

Harry Cameron-Penny studied at The Royal College of Music, and regularly plays in a variety of UK orchestras. He has played to critical acclaim at The Purcell Room as a Park Lane Group Artist, and is a member of The Mercury Quartet, a contemporary chamber music group formed at the RCM to perform Messaien’s Quartet for the End of Time. Harry has worked closely with Nigel Kennedy and his Quintet and is currently The Richard Carne Junior Fellow for Solo Performer at Trinity Laban.

Today he is joined by pianist Alissa Firsova, the daughter of distinguished Russian composers Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov, for a programme that includes two of the favourite works in the clarinet recital repertoire by Brahms and Debussy, as well as Alban Berg’s poetic Four Pieces and a recent work by the talented young composer and clarinettist Mark Simpson.

Get a glimpse into a composer’s creative process and watch from the audience as this year’s Panufnik Young Composers develop their music with the LSO, joined by conductor François-Xavier Roth and composition director Colin Matthews. Featuring works by Kim Ashton, Benjamin Graves, Jae-Moon Lee, Elizabeth Ogonek, James Moriarty, Aaron Parker and Richard Whalley.

Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen joins the BBC SO for Henze’s Love Songs (1984–5). His orchestral fantasy Los caprichos (1963) was inspired by Goya’s series of etchings of the same name. Henze’s vast and varied output for the stage has made him an established name in the genre. His dynamic and haunting Ouverture zu einem Theater was premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin just before Henze passed away in October 2012.

This concert will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Hear & Now.

Hebrides Ensemble marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1 with a programme commemorating that era and its recurring themes of tragedy, loss, demoralisation, defiance and hope. Together, the pieces reflect the pre-war order and passion that turned to violent turmoil, and challenged our deepest human values.

The killer quintet EUPHORIA returns to DROM in a monthly concert series devoted to the work of NEA Jazz Master Foreststorn “Chico” Hamilton (1921-2013). Described as “one of the city’s most buoyant combos (Time Out New York),” EUPHORIA digs into the repertoire of Chico Hamilton, playing old and new arrangements that capture the best of Chico’s legacy.

Pre-concert talk at 6.30pm:
Ryan Wigglesworth talks about his work as conductor, pianist and composer, and particularly his Violin Concerto, which is tonight receiving its first performance in complete form.

Ryan Wigglesworth makes his Hallé concert debut with the Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Britten’s great opera Peter Grimes. In these evocative works, the North Sea is as important (and unfathomable) a character as Grimes himself. Further down the coast of Britain, Debussy had put the finishing touches on his great triptych of seascapes La Mer, musical canvases suggesting the sea at different times of the day and in varying weather conditions. In between these briny masterpieces is an exciting opportunity to hear the world premiere of Ryan Wigglesworth’s revised Violin Concerto, unveiled by Barnabas Kelemen. Berlioz’s Le Roi Lear Overture was inspired by Shakespeare’s great tale of betrayal, self-discovery and redemption and even features Lear’s paternal address to his daughters and his furious ravings on ‘the blasted heath’.

A part of a supplement published in 1972 by the British journal Tempo in memoriam to Stravinsky, …explosante-fixe… is a “prolific” exploitation typical of Pierre Boulez’ art. From the initial publication, the composer created several successive versions that have since been forgotten. The current version of the work uses three sections— Originel, Transitoire VII, and Transitoire V—connected by two brief electronic music passages. Entirely automated with a score following program, the electro-acoustic part created at IRCAM by Andrew Gerzso, is used here not only for the transformation of certain solo flute performances, but also to spatialized the sound via a network of loud speakers. In keeping with the ancient tradition of tributes, …explosante-fixe… adopts the idea of the cannon, here it is not used in its traditional form but as a basic principle, as explained by the composer: “The idea was to confine several instruments to a single nucleus; instruments presented in different registers, each one circling it differently. The nucleus exploded in these different paths, but each musical range was perfectly fixed. I therefore baptized the work, literally: …explosante-fixe… (Pierre Boulez, text and its pre-text, interview with Peter Szendy, Genesis n° 4, 1993).

Internationally renowned concert organist and recording artist Gail Archer releases her seventh solo album with The Muse’s Voice: A Celebration of Women Composers performed on the Gabe M. Wiener Organ (Casavant, 2002) at New York City’s Central Synagogue. Featuring works by today’s leading female composers including Jennifer Higdon, Nadia Boulanger, Jeanne Demessieux and Judith Bingham, The Muse’s Voice enthralls listeners with Archer’s ability to leap seamlessly from baroque to late romantic and modern eras.